China's anti-poverty methodology
China News Weekly reporter/Xu Dawei
Issued at 2020.10.5, Issue 967 of "China News Weekly"
"Our battle for poverty alleviation has been victoriously ended." said Roerte, the party secretary of Ribu Township, Malkang City, Aba Prefecture, Sichuan Province.
Nibu Township covers 956 square kilometers, an area equivalent to one ten thousandth of China, but its population is only 3579.
As the most remote township in Malkang City, it would take 6 hours to reach the county by driving without road closures or collapses.
Roerte told China News Weekly that Ribu Township belongs to the Shenzang District. There are 2 poverty-stricken villages, 96 poor households and 424 poor people. It is a deeply impoverished area.
Remoteness and occlusion are like covering poverty, and it is difficult to penetrate.
The fight against poverty in Nibu Township was sounded in 2014. Today, Ribu Township has achieved poverty alleviation. In 2019, the annual per capita net income of the whole township reached 14,152 yuan, which is higher than the “annual per capita net income below 3750 yuan” in 2019. National poverty identification line.
The fight against poverty in Nibu Township is a microcosm of China's fight against poverty.
Since the reform and opening up in 1978, according to the World Bank’s international poverty standard of US$1.9 per person per day, China has lifted more than 800 million poor people out of poverty, accounting for more than 70% of the global poverty reduction population during the same period.
With the countdown to the fight against poverty, China will eliminate absolute poverty in 2020.
Poverty is a global problem, and anti-poverty is a global problem.
As a model of government-led poverty alleviation, how to solve the problem of poverty identification mechanism, how to build a national anti-poverty mechanism led by the government, and how to use the efficient mobilization ability of the national system, China has explored a set of "methodology" to solve the problem of anti-poverty .
A number of interviewed experts told China News Weekly that China is the country with the most experience in poverty reduction in the world. The "Chinese experience" is two-way and will provide a reference for the global anti-poverty problem.
Solving the "precision" problem
The Chinese government started large-scale developmental poverty alleviation in 1986 and established a special poverty alleviation organization-the State Council Leading Group for Economic Development in Poverty Areas, which was renamed the State Council Leading Group for Poverty Alleviation and Development in 1993.
This marked the transformation of the Chinese government from the original moral poverty alleviation to institutional poverty alleviation.
Li Xiaoyun, a member of the Expert Advisory Committee of the State Council’s Poverty Alleviation and Development Leading Group and a professor at China Agricultural University, told China News Weekly that China chose developmental poverty alleviation because China’s large population of poor people are mostly concentrated in rural areas. It can only be developed by promoting economic growth. Out of poverty in China.
In terms of development methods, China has learned from the World Bank's comprehensive rural development practices.
In the early 1990s, the World Bank supported poverty alleviation projects in Southwest China through comprehensive rural development to drive the income of the poor. The projects included infrastructure construction projects such as water and electricity, and social projects such as education, health, and housing. And industrial projects such as township enterprises.
Since 1995, China has formulated a regional anti-poverty strategy focusing on poverty-stricken counties, and established a mechanism for “national poverty alleviation key counties”, which has been followed by a large amount of national resource input.
In 1988, the central government allocated 1 billion yuan of special funds for poverty alleviation, and it has increased year by year. By 2013, the special funds for poverty alleviation reached 40.6 billion yuan, an increase of 40 times.
National-level poverty-stricken counties receive huge financial subsidies of tens of millions or even hundreds of millions each year, which are often several times the total annual fiscal revenue of a poor county.
Zhang Qi, dean of the China Institute of Poverty Alleviation, Beijing Normal University, pointed out to China News Weekly that it is difficult to avoid the omission of some poor people by targeting regions as anti-poverty targets.
Lei Ming, the dean of the Institute for Development of Poor Areas of Peking University, pointed out that the extensive poverty alleviation of "overwhelming flooding" has brought about another problem of the phenomenon of "elite capture": the poverty alleviation funds and policies often benefit the poor areas. Middle- and high-income rural households, but poor households are difficult to get real assistance due to their personal abilities and environmental conditions.
On November 3, 2013, when Xi Jinping, the General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee, visited Shibadong Village, Huayuan County, Xiangxi Prefecture, Hunan Province, he first proposed the idea of "precise poverty alleviation" and China's poverty alleviation strategy began to shift.
Many interviewed scholars believe that the targeted poverty alleviation strategy is an in-depth adjustment of China's poverty alleviation development model and an innovation.
Liu Yongfu, director of the Office of Poverty Alleviation of the State Council, once said that to achieve the poverty alleviation of the poor population as scheduled and all poor counties must implement the basic strategy of precision poverty alleviation, reform the current poverty alleviation ideas and methods, change flood irrigation to precision drip irrigation, and change "blood transfusion" to "Hematopoiesis", turning GDP into focus on poverty alleviation.
The difficulty in implementing the precise poverty alleviation strategy is how to establish a precise poverty identification mechanism.
He Xin, who is the deputy secretary of the party committee of Ribu Township, is a poverty alleviation cadre.
He told China News Weekly that Ribu Township relied on the "file establishment and card registration" system to achieve precise identification of poverty, and the screening and positioning of poor households was accomplished through "people-sea tactics" and door-to-door visits.
Poverty alleviation cadres in Ribu Township need to accurately collect information on the population, labor force, and income sources of each poor family when they go to the countryside, and provide relevant certification materials.
As an important coordinate system for accurately identifying poverty, China's poverty standards are also evolving.
Zhang Qi told China News Weekly that the poverty line in China was originally formulated by converting minimum living requirements into income, and then combining income and consumption to set new standards.
After 2010, China has included medical, education, housing and other factors into the national poverty standards.
Precision poverty alleviation is similar to targeted therapy. After the precision is in place, the next thing to do is to implement precise policies.
Taking Ribu Township as an example, the main causes of poverty are disability due to illness, lack of labor, and return to poverty due to injury and disaster.
He Xin told China News Weekly that the local government has allocated public welfare positions, such as forest administrators, grass administrators, river administrators, and street health workers in mountain forests and pastures to solve the problems of poor households who are impoverished due to illness and disability. Employment and income issues.
For poor families who lack labor, they are included in the subsistence allowances as a whole to cover the bottom line.
For relatively poor households above the poverty line, the local industry drives the collective economy to provide supplementary medical insurance.
This mechanism was called by He Xin the "Marshall Plan of the Japanese Township".
At the provincial level, through the establishment of a poverty alleviation project database, the entire province of Sichuan has compiled industrial poverty alleviation plans from county to village and household to household to ensure accurate project arrangements.
Through the implementation of employment support, immigration and relocation, subsistence allowances, medical assistance and other programs, it is possible to ensure that poverty alleviation measures are accurate to households.
Lei Ming believes that this is a set of precise working mechanism, first accurately identify the poor, and then find out the real cause of poverty, and then carry out personalized and precise policy.
In the operation of the precision poverty alleviation system, another crucial mechanism is the precise feedback and exit mechanism.
He Xin told China News Weekly that poverty alleviation information will be strictly compared with relevant standards and entered into the poverty alleviation information system.
The information is dynamically updated to ensure the accuracy of information feedback. “If there is a return to poverty due to a disaster, the relevant information will be updated in time.” He Xin said.
"China News Weekly" learned from the Sichuan Provincial Poverty Alleviation and Development Bureau that Sichuan has established a provincial-level poverty alleviation big data platform. Through annual dynamic adjustments, Sichuan can ensure the precise positioning of poverty alleviation targets.
Lei Ming told China News Weekly that from the central to the provincial level and then to the cities and counties, this set of top-down big data information system is very accurate.
The establishment of a precise feedback mechanism makes precise exit possible.
Many experts in the field of poverty alleviation pointed out to China News Weekly that the exit mechanism and assessment are closely integrated, and whether the exit conditions are met or not can be determined through a third-party evaluation.
For example, in 2018, Maerkang City, including Ribu Township, passed the two-level acceptance and third-party assessment of Sichuan Province and Aba Prefecture, before completing the "poverty alleviation".
Anhui Province stipulates that the removal of caps in impoverished counties must undergo a preliminary municipal review and then a provincial verification, and conduct a third-party assessment.
In the exit mechanism, the formulation of relevant exit standards also tends to be multidimensional.
Take Gansu as an example. Gansu Province has established a three-level poverty alleviation and exit indicator system for poverty-stricken households, poor villages, and poor counties. The withdrawal of the poor is based on households. The household’s per capita disposable income in that year has steadily exceeded the current national poverty alleviation standards and has safe housing. 7. The main indicators are 7 items such as students who drop out of school due to poverty and safe drinking water. Among them, "the annual per capita disposable income of poor households" and "safe housing" are veto indicators.
The exit of poor villages is mainly measured by the incidence of poverty, taking into account a total of 13 indicators such as village infrastructure, public services and industrial development.
The exit of poverty-stricken counties is mainly measured by the incidence of poverty, with a total of 15 exit indicators.
Tan Xuewen, secretary-general of the Center for Research on Poverty Issues of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believes that since 2013, the biggest improvement in poverty identification is dynamic adjustment and sufficiency. It is saturated identification and focuses on avoiding omissions.
In the future, the current precise identification mechanism should be further innovated, and multi-dimensional poverty identification and measurement will be integrated into the identification of relative poverty.
"Military Order"-style poverty alleviation
"The township party committee will incorporate poverty alleviation into the next year's development plan every year." Roerte, secretary of the party committee of Ribu Township, told China News Weekly. The development plans of China are all carried out around poverty alleviation.
In China's anti-poverty path, the state implements an anti-poverty strategy in an organized and hierarchical manner from top to bottom, and incorporates anti-poverty into the national development plan.
The Chinese government has successively formulated the "National August 7 Poverty Alleviation Plan (1994-2000)", "China Rural Poverty Alleviation and Development Outline (2001-2010)" and "China Rural Poverty Alleviation and Development Outline (2011-2020)". These medium and long-term The development plan has clear goals, as well as funding and organizational guarantees. This means that China has established an anti-poverty institutional framework at the national level.
At the provincial level, the "Outline for Rural Poverty Alleviation and Development" issued by Guangxi, Sichuan, Jiangxi and other provinces all clearly require poverty alleviation and development to be incorporated into local economic and social development strategies and overall plans.
Lei Ming, dean of the Institute for Development of Poor Areas at Peking University, believes that systemic poverty alleviation is a crucial way of poverty alleviation in China.
Failure to institutionalize anti-poverty means that anti-poverty can only be a policy of measures and cannot form an overall effect.
The advantages brought by the institutionalization of anti-poverty are obvious. Tan Xuewen, secretary-general of the Center for Poverty Research of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believes that this is a fundamental, active resource-oriented advantage.
According to market principles, resources and market opportunities cannot reach remote and backward places.
Incorporating anti-poverty into an organic part of the country's economic and social development plan, there is no representative dilemma in the Western model, and market paradoxes are avoided.
Zhang Qi, Dean of the China Institute of Poverty Alleviation at Beijing Normal University, who has been tracking and studying the process of poverty alleviation in China for a long time, found that after anti-poverty has been systematically incorporated into the development plan, a series of policies have been formulated from the central to the local level. These policies have been legalized to a considerable extent. Governments at all levels continue to promote the institutionalization and standardization of the poverty alleviation process.
The "Regulations on Poverty Alleviation in Guizhou Province" promulgated and implemented in November 2016 clearly defined the government's responsibilities in poverty alleviation, and comprehensively regulated the targets and scope of poverty alleviation, social participation in poverty alleviation projects and fund management.
Zhang Qi believes that various provinces have successively formulated "Poverty Alleviation Regulations," and governments at all levels have strengthened their poverty alleviation efforts and intensity, and have higher material, financial, and talent guarantees.
Another advantage brought about by China's institutionalization of anti-poverty is the high efficiency of the nationwide system. China can complete the task of poverty alleviation as planned.
With the blessing of institutional advantages and political leadership, China has demonstrated a strong social mobilization ability, mobilizing government and private forces to participate in poverty alleviation.
Under the promotion of the central level, 9 provinces (cities) in the eastern developed regions, 5 cities under separate plans and 4 large cities have helped 10 provinces (regions and cities) in the west. "Enterprises help thousands of villages" targeted poverty alleviation actions.
In 2019 alone, the eastern region invested 22.9 billion yuan in financial aid in the east-west poverty alleviation cooperation, mobilized 6.5 billion yuan in social donations, and helped sell 48.3 billion yuan in special agricultural products in poor areas.
The central unit directly invested 6.7 billion yuan in assistance funds in designated poverty alleviation counties, introduced 6.3 billion yuan in assistance funds, and helped sell 15.4 billion yuan in special agricultural products in poor areas.
At the local level, taking Sichuan Province as an example, in 2019, 61 counties in 17 cities in Guangdong and Zhejiang provinces established twinning relationships with 68 poor counties in Sichuan, and 24 central units and 379 units in the province carried out targeted poverty alleviation; The 35 counties in the 7 cities and 35 counties assisted 45 deeply impoverished counties in the Tibetan area of the Yi area; 76,000 private enterprises and business associations participated in the "Ten Thousand Enterprises Help Ten Thousand Villages" action.
Within the Chinese administrative system, a large number of party and government cadres have been mobilized into the field of poverty alleviation.
As of 2019, government agencies, state-owned enterprises and institutions at the county level and above have selected 242,000 village teams and 906,000 cadres in villages, including 206,000 first secretaries.
In addition, a total of 1.974 million township cadres joined the poverty alleviation.
As a member of the helping army, He Xin laughed and called himself the "Secretary of Alms."
Like tens of thousands of poverty alleviation cadres across the country, in most cases, He Xin can only use his professional knowledge and mobilize personal resources to attract the implementation of poverty alleviation projects.
On the one hand, at the beginning of poverty alleviation, the local development industry was struggling. He Xin encouraged the people to plant local traditional crops and valuable Chinese herbal medicines, and set out to optimize agricultural products, and increase the profit of agricultural products by attracting food deep processing projects.
And a series of problems such as agricultural product sales, brand packaging, transportation, etc. all need He Xin to find ways to solve them.
But on the other hand, as a temporary cadre who has neither financial rights nor powers, He Xin's poverty alleviation task has been suppressed.
Grassroots cadres like He Xin are the last link in the chain of responsibility for poverty alleviation.
From top to bottom in China's administrative system, a "military order"-style poverty alleviation system has been formed.
The country's poverty alleviation strategy can be implemented to the most basic level, and at the same time, the task of poverty alleviation can be broken down to the basic level.
All localities regard poverty alleviation as the “top-level project”, and the province is responsible for the implementation, and the cities and counties are responsible for implementation. The “five-level secretaries” as the top leaders of the party and government are the first responsibility of provinces, cities (prefectures), counties, townships (towns) and villages people.
At the Central Poverty Alleviation and Development Work Conference held in November 2015, the party and government leaders in 22 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities in the central and western regions signed a letter of responsibility for poverty alleviation.
The pressure is passed down, the responsibility letter is signed and the military order is issued, and a pressure-type responsibility system based on the precise evaluation mechanism is constructed, and the responsibility chain and task chain are formed.
Roerte, secretary of the party committee of the Japanese township, told China News Weekly that the provincial and prefectural departments have an assessment mechanism for counties and townships and have established a monitoring system.
Many experts told China News Weekly that the assessment mechanism for poverty alleviation is based on numbers as the core of measurement, quantifying both poverty alleviation actions and poverty alleviation effects. The poverty alleviation task is broken down into several poverty alleviation indicators, and then in the form of annual assessment and general assessment. , To conduct assessment and verification of assistance units and poverty alleviation cadres.
For example, in Sichuan Province, the main body of the assessment is the Provincial Leading Group for Poverty Alleviation. The specific work is under the responsibility of the Poverty Alleviation Supervision and Assessment Office, which will be carried out once a year from 2016 to 2020.
The assessment targets are 21 cities (prefectures) and 88 impoverished counties in 21 cities (states), as well as government leaders and principals.
The assessment includes the effectiveness of poverty reduction, precise identification, precise assistance and use of poverty alleviation funds, and the effectiveness of supervision.
The ranking of poverty alleviation assessment will eventually be reported to the whole province, and accountability will be implemented.
Because the province directly controls the political promotion of the “top leaders”, based on the responsibility mechanism of the “top leaders” of the party and government, the administrative coordination, capital allocation, and human resource allocation for poverty alleviation will be optimally guaranteed.
The accountability pressure reflected in the assessment ranking will form a reversing mechanism.
The evaluation methods adopted at the central level such as inter-provincial cross-assessment, third-party evaluation, unannounced media interviews, and performance evaluation of financial special poverty alleviation funds have further consolidated the responsibility system and forced the implementation of various targeted poverty alleviation policies and measures.
Some scholars have analyzed that the responsibility system for poverty alleviation under the pressure of the evaluation mechanism, on the one hand, strengthens the accountability of inspectors to ensure the effectiveness of poverty alleviation; on the other hand, it takes solid achievements in poverty alleviation as an important basis for selecting and appointing cadres to form an incentive mechanism.
Flexible government
In the early implementation stage of China's poverty alleviation strategy, the government is the most powerful force for poverty alleviation, and it accomplishes poverty alleviation tasks through highly centralized administrative instructions.
With the deepening of poverty alleviation, social forces are playing an increasingly important role in poverty alleviation and development.
At the end of 2017, the State Council’s Leading Group for Poverty Alleviation and Development issued a notice on "Extensively Guiding and Mobilizing Social Organizations to Participate in Poverty Alleviation" to provide strategic support.
Roerte, secretary of the party committee of Ribu Township, told China News Weekly that Ribu Township has set up a special work class to actively connect with enterprises, NGO organizations and other social poverty alleviation forces.
Like other deeply impoverished areas in China, education is a prominent shortcoming of Ribu Township.
Benefiting from the network resources accumulated during his 18-year police career, He Xin, who was appointed as the deputy secretary of the Party Committee of Ribu Township, spent a lot of time connecting with NGOs. He hopes to connect the poverty alleviation of rural education in Ribu Township with external quality. Resources.
In July 2018, Nanjing Special Education Teachers College selected an outstanding national volunteer service team Nuanyang Charity to carry out a 15-day integrated education rural summer camp at the Central School of Ribu Township.
The project leader, Xue Haojie, secretary of the Youth League Committee of Nanjing Special Education Teachers College, told China News Weekly that children in the mountains have no access to the outside world. The purpose of the project is to expand the children’s horizons and let them understand the outside world and have a better understanding of the future. There is greater vision.
He Xin revealed to China News Weekly that he is currently working on the "Child Director" project.
The project aims to set up a full-time "child director" in each village. One of the tasks of the child director is to collect basic information about local children, draw a multidimensional poverty map, and supervise and help local children complete schooling, medical care, and social application. Relief and other matters.
In fact, China implements a poverty alleviation and development model led by the government, with the participation of the market and society.
Lei Ming, Dean of the Institute for Development of Poor Areas of Peking University, believes that in the process of poverty alleviation, China is led by the government but not arbitrary. It seems to promote anti-poverty in accordance with the behavior of the bureaucratic administrative system, but it is not an administrative order in the traditional sense. Rigid dominance is a kind of flexible dominance.
"When poverty is very large, social forces are beyond their power. The government pays when it should pay, and when it needs to pay people, it needs to pay more. For fancy-style individual poverty, more social power is needed." Lei Ming said.
In Lei Ming's view, the government-led model has actually established an effective mobilization mechanism to mobilize social forces and market entities to participate in poverty alleviation.
The government uses industry to promote employment to introduce market mechanisms.
The government takes the initiative to connect with the market, provide corresponding services, create a good industry development environment, and ensure the smoothness of market mechanisms.
"The power of the government has undergone a transformation. It is not the traditional way of large-scale procurement, but indirect provision of services and flexible leadership." Lei Ming said.
Roerte summarized the three most important experiences of Ribu Township’s poverty alleviation experience: employment drives the whole family out of poverty, the industrial docking market gives the village collective economy "hematopoiesis", and the help of social forces makes up for the shortcomings of resources.
Tan Xuewen, secretary general of the Poverty Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told China News Weekly that if the proportion of poverty alleviation contributions is calculated, the government's contribution to poverty alleviation is incremental poverty reduction, and the market has always been the biggest contributor.
Under this government-led model, the cooperation model between social forces and the government is related to the effectiveness of poverty alleviation.
Since the end of 2014, Li Xiaoyun, a professor at China Agricultural University, has taken root in Yao villages in Mengla County, Yunnan Province to carry out poverty alleviation projects.
Li Xiaoyun believes that in this deeply impoverished village called Hebian Village, the main reason for poverty is that the villagers basically have no assets that can generate income continuously and lack the ability to realize their assets.
Li Xiaoyun tried to practice the poverty alleviation model of "government-led, social participation, and farmers as the center".
He proposed the development goal of Hebian Village to build a small high-end conference economy, leisure and tourism village, and the poverty management plan was included in the targeted poverty alleviation work plan of Mengla County.
With the construction of new houses with unique Yao characteristics, the local tourism economy began to flourish, and the income from guest rooms drove the income growth of the villagers.
Infrastructure such as 4G network and roads have gradually been completed locally, and the government has invested more than 15 million yuan in this poverty alleviation project.
Li Xiaoyun told China News Weekly that the secret to the success of the project lies in "not competing with the government for pie," and at the same time finding innovations and doing "what the government thinks it can't do."
Li Xiaoyun believes that in the field of poverty governance, the role of social forces is very important, but it cannot replace the government.
Social forces cooperate with the government, do not think about leading, because the performance of poverty alleviation is what the government needs to show.
In general, government poverty alleviation is effective in solving large-scale and concentrated poverty problems, while social and market poverty alleviation has more advantages in terms of professionalism and efficiency.
Tan Xuewen believes that after 2020, it is inevitable that the market mechanism will play the leading role.
The role and contribution of social forces need to be further strengthened, either through the role of social forces themselves, or through more government procurement services.
In his view, alleviating relative poverty will be an important task in rural revitalization for a period of time, and the government cannot degenerate into a supporting role.
At present, there are 757,000 social organizations in China.
On the one hand, there are ardent expectations for social organizations to participate in poverty alleviation and play a greater role; on the other, there is the reality that it is difficult to realize their potential.
Li Xiaoyun believes that the role of social organizations in the field of poverty alleviation does not match their own numbers. The reason is that the policies to encourage social organizations to participate in poverty alleviation are not in place, and the mechanism for civil society organizations to participate in poverty alleviation has not been formed. In addition, civil society organizations have The characteristics of urbanity and post-modernity are not suitable for carrying out complex social and economic projects in poor villages with difficult conditions.
Civil society organizations are more suitable to participate in solving some social transformation issues, such as education.
Shanghai True Love Dream Charity Foundation is a non-governmental organization.
In recent years, 1,390 multimedia classrooms have been built in 242 poverty-stricken counties across the country, equivalent to 203 million yuan in donations.
Pang Zongping, director-general of the Shanghai True Love Dream Charity Development Center, told China News Weekly that they hope to use this to promote education balance and use education to promote social progress.
In his view, in the field of poverty alleviation, civil society organizations play the role of checking for omissions.
In other words, do what the government wants to do but cannot do.
Zhang Xia, general manager of the school service department of the Shanghai True Love Dream Charity Foundation, told China News Weekly that in addition to half of the project funds are self-raised, the government will purchase social services to match the other half of the funds.
During the operation of the project, the local government department is an important partner, and the government guarantees it through policy support.
Many interviewed NGOs expressed similar views. The government should establish a relationship of mutual trust and cooperation with social organizations involved in poverty alleviation.
"For things the government has funds and resources but not enough manpower to do, resources and funds can be given to social organizations through government procurement. In addition, the government should also provide more relaxed policies to support the growth of social organizations. Support." Pang Zongping said.
A universal "China Plan"
China is the first developing country in the world to complete the poverty reduction mission of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals by 2030.
In February 2017, when UN Secretary-General Guterres attended the 53rd Munich Security Conference, he praised China as "the world record holder in the field of poverty reduction."
In just four years from 2013 to 2016, 55.64 million people were lifted out of poverty in China, which is equivalent to the total population of a large European country.
As far as China is concerned, eradicating absolute poverty is just one step away.
At the beginning of this year, the State Council’s Leading Group for Poverty Alleviation and Development launched a listing supervision campaign on 52 impoverished counties and 1,113 impoverished villages that had not been capped at the end of 2019.
Up to now, the stock issues of housing safety, compulsory education, medical and health protection and drinking water safety for the poor in 52 listed counties have all been resolved.
The "China Plan" for anti-poverty has been highly praised by the United Nations, the World Bank and other international institutions.
However, opening the "China Plan", China's centralized system and the particularity of the national system make China's poverty alleviation "methodology" and the corresponding fiscal poverty reduction policies of Brazil, India, and Indonesia have huge differences.
Tan Xuewen told China News Weekly that poverty reduction in some developing countries in Southeast Asia mainly relies on the power of the pro-poor free market, conditional transfer payment policies, social security and other measures. Some countries have adopted measures similar to the whole village Measures such as resettlement and relocation.
Li Xiaoyun believes that the "China Plan" has two major characteristics. One is to promote economic growth and get rid of poverty in development; the other is government-led.
In his view, Chinese society is not an income-based society in Western developed countries. There are many poor people, and most of them are concentrated in rural areas. It is impossible to implement a wage-transfer anti-poverty strategy.
"China’s poverty alleviation method combines the characteristics of developing countries’ lack of financial resources and low economic development levels in the process of economic development, making it impossible to transfer wages to the poor, and at the same time avoids falling into welfare under low-level economic development. Trap." Li Xiaoyun said.
In fact, many developing countries have done a lot of financial transfer payments to help the poor out of political campaigning needs.
As a result, the government's financial resources are insufficient and the government is dependent on foreign aid.
As early as 2003, the Brazilian government began to implement the "Family Subsidy Program" whose purpose was to provide living allowances, free education and medical assistance to the poor. The program once covered a quarter of the Brazilian population.
The risk of directly assisting the poor through national finances is that once the Brazilian economy is weak, the government's cash assistance often suffers from "insufficient blood supply."
Brazilian public opinion analysis believes that the family subsidy program cannot completely solve the poverty problem in Brazil.
The income of the poor depends on the increase in jobs. The reality in Brazil is that the gap between the rich and the poor is large and income inequality is still very serious.
In 2017, the World Bank reset the international poverty standard.
Under the new standards, the ranks of Brazil’s poor population rapidly expanded, from 8.9 million under the old standards to 45.5 million, accounting for 22% of Brazil’s total population.
Thousands of mansions are separated from the slums, a common sight in Brazilian cities.
In sub-Saharan Africa, there has been a disconnect between poverty reduction and economic growth.
Take Nigeria as an example. As the largest economy in Africa, Nigeria’s economic growth has once attracted the attention of the world.
In recent years, Nigeria's digital economy has developed rapidly. From 2009 to 2019, the number of financial technology companies in Africa has grown at an annual rate of 24%, mainly in Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa.
However, according to the data shown by the World Poverty Clock, as of February 2019, 91.16 million Nigerians are in extreme poverty, accounting for nearly half of the total population.
Nigeria has also become the most impoverished country in the world.
What is more worrying is that Nigeria’s population growth rate is faster than economic growth.
According to estimates from the World Poverty Clock, the number of extremely poor Nigerians increases by 6 per minute.
Li Xiaoyun told China News Weekly that in African countries like Nigeria, the main driving force for economic growth comes from capital-intensive industries, such as mining and electronic communications services, and economic growth cannot drive the employment of the poor.
Lei Ming, Dean of the Institute for Development of Poor Areas of Peking University, believes that the biggest difference between China’s fiscal poverty reduction policies and other developing countries is that there is an effective governance system to support and ensure that the policies are in operation. Effectiveness.
With the strengthening of the country’s economic strength and taking full advantage of the experience of developed countries, China has begun to continuously strengthen guarantee-based poverty alleviation and increase wage transfer payments.
Many interviewed scholars believe that China's poverty reduction experience has Chinese characteristics and is universal.
The core experience of poverty reduction is that, driven by the political agenda of the ruling party, government-led, relying on the combination of developmental poverty alleviation and guarantee-based poverty alleviation, the overall poverty alleviation strategy is strategically evolved at different stages.
"All countries must have a prerequisite for poverty reduction, that is, the central and local governments must have a strong political determination to reduce poverty, not just as a political vision." Tan Xuewen said.
China News Weekly, Issue 37, 2020
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